Google is starting to remind me of Apple in the '90s: announcing more cool R&D prototypes than they release actual cool products. Even the R&D team names are similar - Google's is called "Advanced Technology and Projects"; Apple's was called "Advanced Technology Group".

Funny. Google's 'moonshots' actually remind me more of another R&D-focused company. Interestingly enough, without that company, the computer industry would have been set back decades, and Apple would most likely have been reduced to a footnote in computer history.

I would rather large companies spend their cash on potentially awesome research that may (or may not) advance computer technology and the human race, than have them stash it away in shady overseas bank accounts.

Well... Here's the thing. Without funding from government/monopoly/businesses without expectations of immediate returns we could have had stagnant computing sector.

I suspect that without PARC*, we would have stayed with the console for a long time. It's maybe not decades on the GUI alone, but it's a few years that would have caused an avalanche that would have resulted in the whole computing industry to not progress as fast as it has. And in compound we very well may have been set back by 10 years.

As an example - today's GPU performance was mainly driven by a need for better graphics and we don't need to wait a second for the newest GPU to be taxed to it's maximum. So saying "build it and they will come" is not universally true. DotCom bubble was the best example where it was built but nobody came.

* - or Bell Labs and other research organisations funded by dominant market players/monopolies.